1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to computer systems, and more specifically to the analysis of defects in computer software products.
2. Description of the Related Art
While software systems continue to grow in size and complexity, business demands continue to require shorter development cycles. This has led software developers to compromise on functionality, time to market, and quality of software products. Furthermore, the increased schedule pressures and limited availability of resources and skilled labor can lead to problems such as incomplete design of software products, inefficient testing, poor quality, high development and maintenance costs, and the like. This may lead to poor customer satisfaction and a loss of market share for software developers.
To improve product quality, many organizations devote an increasing share of their resources to testing and identifying problem areas related to software and the process of software development. Accordingly, it is not unusual to include a quality assurance team in software development projects to identify defects in the software product during, and after development of a software product. By identifying and resolving defects before marketing the product to customers, software developers can assure customers of the reliability of their products, and reduce the occurrence of post-sale software fixes such as patches and upgrades which may frustrate their customers.
Software testing may involve verifying the correctness, completeness, security, quality, etc. of a product. During testing, a technical investigation may be performed by, for example, executing a program or application with the intent to find errors. If errors are found, one or more areas in the software code may be identified based on the errors. Therefore, developers may alter the code in the identified regions to obviate the error.
After a defect has been fixed, data regarding the defect, and the resolution of the defect, may be stored in a database. The defects may be classified and analyzed as a whole using, for example, Orthogonal Defect Classification (ODC). ODC is a commonly used complex quality assessment schema for understanding code related defects uncovered during testing. However, defects may occur due to a wide variety of reasons, for example, data and environment related factors. Therefore, because ODC is limited to analyzing only code defects it does not provide any meaningful, multifaceted analysis of key focus areas related to software development such as risks of moving the project forward, testing effectiveness, testing efficiency, consumer satisfaction, readiness of a system for production, and the like.
Accordingly, what is needed are improved methods and systems for classifying defects and identifying problem areas in the development cycle.